Is this the Golden age of British Boxing or do we have a bunch of pretenders?

By Scott Gilfoid: To listen to some of the British boxing fans, you would think we’re entering the golden age of British boxing. Who knows? They could be right. I would really like to see a bunch of British boxers take over the sport, if they can. But I don’t see too many British boxers that I can see dominating any of the divisions. I can see some paper champions, at least three of them, but I can see any real dominating fighters that will make me think we’re in a golden era of British boxers. Let’s look what we have in the way of talented British fighters, shall we?

Amir Khan – First of all, WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan (22-1, 16 KO’s) is probably the most popular of the current British world champions. Only 23, Khan would seem to have a long boxing career ahead of him if he can avoid getting knocked out too often. Khan recently defeated Dmitriy Salita, his number #1 mandatory on December 5th. The win seems to have created a huge fuss about Khan from British boxing fans, many of them who see Khan as the next big thing in boxing next to Manny Pacquiao.

I personally am the wait and see type of person. I’m kind of like Socrates. I see something and then I check it out to see if it’s real. In the case of Khan, I still haven’t seen him fight anyone of talent other than Colombian Breidis Prescott, who looked like a huge tank running over a lamb as he slaughtered Khan in a brutal 1st round knockout last year. I could maybe ignore the loss and see it as a simple mistake if Khan had at least attempted to avenge his defeat to Prescott.

However, Khan has stayed away from Prescott like the plague since the defeat and has instead focused on arguably much safer fights against Osin Fagan, Marco Antonio Barrera, Andriy Kotelnik and Salita. I suppose each of these fighters are good boxers in their own way, but what they aren’t is power puncher. Since Khan’s main weakness is his chin, we don’t know whether he has gotten past that problem or not because he hasn’t fought anyone with power since that fateful night against Prescott. As such, I have to consider Khan fools gold until he shows that he can get in the ring with someone like Prescott or Marcos Maidana and stay in without being knocked out again.

Carl Froch – The WBC super middleweight champion, Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO’s) had dodged a couple of bullets in 2009 with his victories over first Jermain Taylor and then Andre Dirrell. Froch was knocked down in his fight with Taylor, who many boxing fans think is a shot fighter, and then had to pull out the fight in the 12th round by knocking Taylor out. Froch was behind in the fight and getting a boxing lesson during most of the first half of the fight against Taylor. Froch hardly looked better in his fight with Dirrell in their Super Six tournament fight in October, beating Dirrell by a controversial 12 round split decision in Froch’s home city of Nottingham.

The people that think that Froch won the fight, mainly British boxing fans from my guess, think that he won the fight because Dirrell clinched and moved too much. The British have a term for this kind of fighting, calling “negative.” However, Dirrell appeared to land the much cleaner blows and make Froch miss with many of his shots all night long. If you think that Breidis Prescott had problems connecting against Kevin Mitchell, then you need to see the troubles that Froch had in trying to land against Dirrell.

Froch simply couldn’t land with any deal of accuracy until he started to rough Dirrell up and hit him on the inside, in some cases resorting to holding and hitting and throwing rabbit punches. The referee took a passive role in the fight and did little to stop the fouling other than penalizing Dirrell of all people for an occasional clinch.

But based on how Froch fought against both Dirrell and Taylor, I have to say that Froch won’t likely be holding his WBC title for long. I fully expect Froch to lose his next Super Six fight against recently beaten Mikkel Kessler on April 17th. And after that, I see Froch losing to Arthur Abraham in another Super Six fight. Because of that, I see Froch as fools gold like Khan and not the fighter that will bring the golden era of British boxing to the people.

David Haye – Recently, Haye defeated WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev by a 12 round majority decision last month to capture the WBA title. It was a terrible fight to watch, with few punches thrown a massive amount of running being down by Haye. He complained later of hurting his hand early in the fight, but Haye was horrible to watch even in the 1st round with his running.

Haye has been big about bragging about himself and saying how he wants to fight the Klitschko brothers, but when push came to shove, Haye backed out of fights with both of the Klitschko brothers. Other than that, all we have to show for Haye’s fights in the past year are wins over Monte Barrett, Valuev, and Enzo Maccarinelli. None of those fighters are considered to be the best in their divisions.

Haye didn’t look all that good in the Barrett fight, and appeared to get knocked down at one point in the fight. The referee ruled it a slip, but it looked like a legitimate knockdown to me. I think Haye looked poor in the Barrett and Valuev fight, and I don’t count Haye’s cruiserweight experience because the division is too weak to really even consider. As such, I don’t see Haye as the type of fighter capable of holding down a heavyweight world title for very long, and I certainly see him as the type of fighter that will bring a new golden age for British boxing. I can see him being golden against exclusively British fighters, but if Haye has to fight other fighters from around the world, I see the gold turning to copper.

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